An Effective PMS Simplifies Hostel Management

In the hospitality industry, one must not underestimate certain sectors as being too small and thereby easy to manage. A 20 bed hostel may face the same dilemmas and hurdles in managing their property as would a 20 room hotel. Hostels and dormitories are a prominent stakeholder in the hospitality sector and they also require avenues and solutions to help manage their establishment efficiently.

How can an effective PMS and Distribution system help a Hostel manage their property?

Managing Reservations

Hostels generally sell beds instead of rooms; an effective PMS can help them manage the number of beds available for reservation on a daily basis. The PMS can further segregate the bookings with regard to long stay guests, group reservations, individual bookings etc.

Bed Allocations

Many hostels offer their guests an option of bed allocation based on gender or family rooms. An effective PMS can ensure that room allocation can be made easily based on the preferences of the guest by just checking the availability on the system. This tool eases the burden of the hostel managers, and helps keep things more systematic and error free.

Distribution

There are several booking engines which focus exclusively on hostels such as hostelworld.com, hihostels.com, hostelsclub.com etc. and cater to this growing market. A competent distribution system enables hostels to sell their rooms on numerous OTA’s by means of one channel manager. They can manage their room inventory in real time across various booking channels without having to manually juggle their inventory around.

Customized Booking Engine

Booking engines can be integrated with the hostel’s website thus providing a seamless reservation process through one platform.

Room inventory would be available across all channels in real time without the need of having to manually consolidate reservations made through different channels.

Inclusions of add-ons and various other Points of Sales

Hostel managers would not need to keep a manual track of extra add-ons that their guests opt for; it can be managed through their PMS by setting up various Points of Sales. Extras such as internet usage, meals, padlocks, linens etc. can be reserved by the guest at the time of booking their rooms, or else bought at the location and it would be synced with their room booking details.

All these factors clearly illustrate how an efficient PMS and distribution system can help end any chaos in managing a hostel. It can streamline all aspects of hostel management and ease the burden on the hostel manager. PMS and distribution systems shall ensure that hostels end up increasing their annual revenues, because it shall ease their work load and simultaneously expose them to numerous booking channels across the globe. It’s an absolute win-win situation. (Read: Hostel Enjoys 10% Savings with Hotelogix)

Neha Arya works as Writer and Communications Manager at Hotelogix, she is passionate about writing and working for the travel and hospitality industry. Born and brought up in Antwerp, Belgium she has been living in India for the past 17 years, you can drop her a line at neha.arya@hotelogix.com